Genipin-Crosslinked Gelatin-Based Emulgels: an Insight into the Thermal, Mechanical, and Electrical Studies

Abstract

Abstract. The present study discusses about the preparation and characterization (thermal, mechanical, and electrical) of the genipin-crosslinked gelatin emulgels. Emulgels have gained importance in recent years due to their improved stability than emulsions and ability to control the drug release. Mustard oil was used as the representative oil. A decrease in the enthalpy and entropy of the formulations was observed with the increase in the oil fraction. The mechanical studies suggested formation of softer emulgels as the oil fraction was increased. As the proportion of the oil fraction was increased in the emulgels, there was a corresponding increase in the impedance. The drug release properties from the emulgels were also studied. Ciprofloxacin was used as the model antimicrobial drug. The drug release was higher from the emulgels whose electrical conductivity was higher.

A review on emerging applications of emulgel as topical drug delivery system

“…According to Table 1, the antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral activities of all emulgels which were studied were good, and few studies reported greater activity than the existing marketed products [25,33]. Emulgels formulated effectively delivered hydrophobic and less water soluble drugs like metronidazole, ciprofloxacin, terbinafine and ketoconazole to the targeted site [25,27,28,29,31]. Most of the formulations showed a good in vivo therapeutic response with reduced systemic toxicity [23][24][25][26].…”

“…The common problem encountered during the development of new formulations is the hydrophobic nature of the drugs, which leads to solubility and bioavailability problems [9] .Therefore, hydrophobic drugs, can be added into the oil phase of the emulsion and delivered to the skin as an emulgel formulation where gels are not suitable dosage forms in delivering hydrophobic drugs. These characteristics of emulgel make them a more effective dosage form [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36].…”

“…Most of the developed formulations discussed in this paper extensively used carbopol 934, carbopol 940 and HPMC as gelling agents to make the gel part of the emulgel. Likewise, tween 20, 40, 80 and span 20, 60, 80 are the commonly used emulsifiers used to make the emulsion [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. Penetration enhancers are used as an aid in improving the transdermal drug delivery [35,42,48].…”

“…Evaluation of emulgels has mainly focused on analyzing their drug release profile, physical properties, stability, penetration through skin and local or systemic toxicity. Physical properties like consistency, homogenicity, appearance, swelling index, extrudability, clarity, spreadability, viscosity, pH value and rheological properties have been tested in most of the studies [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][44][45][46][47][48]. Fewer studies have proved that prepared emulgels are found to have less systemic toxicity and adverse effects compared to parenteral and oral dosage forms of the same active ingredient [29,37].…”

A basal-bolus insulin regimen integrated microneedle patch for intraday postprandial glucose control

“…2F), the characteristic peaks observed at 1245, 1540, and 1650 cm −1 in the Gel sample are assigned to C═O bands of carbonyl groups, N─H band of the amino group, and N─H bands of the amide III group, respectively (22). Specifically, the intensity of N─H band of the amino group decreased, and the peak lightly shifted toward the lower wave number (1245 to 1240 cm −1 ) was observed in the cGel sample, which can be attributed to the cross-linking reactions between genipin and amino groups on Gel (23). It can be expected that the cross-linking process was sufficient to form a compact network, potentially acting in a physicochemical manner to prolong the release of the insulin.…”